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Reading with Gilles Deleuze, this thesis explores art as a production that abandons representation as a formation of identity in favour of an ontology of becoming. I argue that the move to abstraction in painting resonates with the aim of "thought without image" because it counters representation with a radical materiality that returns painting to the movement of matter. In order to situate Deleuze's thinking on art within a trajectory of a philosophy of becoming I open the thesis with a chapter on Bergson and Merleau-Ponty. Here I introduce the notion of 'thinking in painting' and argue that, while in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of art painting is a pedagogical investigation of the pre-human, chaotic and invisible 'depth' of a lived visible world, Deleuze takes Bergson's commitment to the possibility of moving beyond the human seriously and reverses the order of perception in order to seize the non-human virtual that eludes actualization. For Deleuze, the task of painting is therefore not to reveal the ontogenesis of the actual and the lived, but to extract the virtual and to embody it as a monument to that event. In abstraction the interest moves from the mechanism of perception to the work of paint, and in the subsequent chapters on Mondrian, Pollock, Klee and Bacon I explore specific practices and their peculiar logic of sensation. In Mondrian we see the strange space of virtuality unleashed when the line is not constrained by the closure of the punctual system, and in Pollock's explosive "all-over" paintings identify that space not as a chaos but as a chaosmosis or machinic heterogeneity. I argue that by understanding these modulating and rhythmic compositions as haptic spaces, we break through the distancing of visibility and can begin to think at the level of expressive matter. I then turn to Klee, and using the famous image of "taking a walk with a line" explore the notion of the emergent figure in the context of Klee's aim to "render visible". What we find is an art where space and the form of expression works on the plane of composition and refers only to the unfolding rhythms of the abstract line. In the final chapter I discuss Bacon's portraits and look at how the multiplicity of the event that is maintained in the diagrammatic composition is drawn into the recognizable face. I conclude that the embodiment of the non-human event forces thought to confront the possibility of the emergent identity that is realized in the abstraction of "thinking in painting".

This thesis explores the relationship between occupations and the ontology of the social. I begin by drawing a distinction between the messianic and the modern as concentrated in the affective transformation of vocation into occupation. I then, in the Introduction, sketch an ontic-ontological contrast proper to the modern, between modernity, as the collective problematization of social diversity, and the contemporary, as the plural ground of need which provides a source for these problematizations. I argue that this distinction will enable me to shed new light on the occupational as a distinctly modern event. In Part I, I begin by providing a reading of Durkheim in which I argue that the occupational is to be understood ontologically, but no longer by means of the theorization of society and social types. This kind of theorization, exemplified in Durkheim's concept of solidarity, contains a fundamental ambiguity between this concept's ontological senses of original diversity and of unity in diversity. Durkheim's thought is thus first intelligible in terms of an implicit evolutionary sense of coherence or `need of wholeness.' However, the explicit evolutionary framework and its central typological difference between the mechanical and organic is an attempt to resolve the ambiguity that must fail because it addresses primarily a distinction of obligation rather than a distinction of need. Obligation is shown to be a concept of facticity which overcodes and obscures the distinction of need. I then go on to argue that sociality can be better accounted for in terms of a continuity of social becoming which is revealed in a perspective of modernity purged of the modernist tendency to metaphorize this continuity in terms such as `solidity' (Durkheim) and `flow' (Tarde). This perspective is the irreducibly plural perspective of the contemporary, which, I conclude Part I by suggesting, lies in a sense of merging with a social outside. In Part II, I turn to investigate the outside by discussing the social thought of Bergson and Deleuze. Bergson's thought is presented as an alternative to the deductivesociologistic approaches of Durkheim and Tarde, because it attempts to critically affirm the smooth duration of social continuity. However, I argue that the notion of `open society' that Bergson presents is still too tied to a model of rare spirituality and hence to the messianic perspective. I then proceed to a social-theoretical analysis of Deleuze's oeuvre, in order to show how he uses elements of a thought of continuity from Tarde (microsociology) and from Bergson (multiplicity), but that he is able to transcend the family-model-centeredness of Tarde and the rare-spiritual-modelcenteredness of Bergson, by theorizing non-modelled figures of transformative affective multiplicity inscribed within the actual, ie. `full particularities'. In my concluding chapter, I show how the intellectual trajectory which takes us from Durkheim to Deleuze can be analysed as a movement from a doctrine or relatively passive notion of social externality towards a more active social image of the outside. In particular, I am concerned to show how this image of the outside can be recontextualized in terms of a movement of occupation that can be thought of as always combining a sense of the contemporary with a sense of modernity.

My concern in this thesis is with the transcendental question concerning the condition of possibility for social science. I argue that for social scientific knowledge to obtain one must: (1) have a conception of knowledge formation as theoretically mediated and fallible; and (2), social scientific knowledge claims must be about an object of study which conceptualises social structure as an enablement as well as an external constraint upon agency. This means: (1) arguing for an anti-foundational epistemology, which avoids becoming truth-relativism, by being complemented with a metaphysical realist ontology (giving us the position of 'realist anti-foundationalism'); and (2), using a social realist meta-theory of emergent properties to explain how methodology (i. e. the construction of specific theories and empirical research) has a conceptually mediated and fallible access to social reality. Developing a critical (i. e. transcendental) examination of the presuppositions of social scientific knowledge also means, afortiori, using realism as an underlabourer. The negative underlabouring role is to proscribe theories based on some form of epistemic immediacy, or being-knowing identity. It therefore means rejecting positivist, empiricist and essentialist versions of social science. The form of essentialism dealt with is called the sociological logic of immediacy, and this pertains to definitive ontologies of social structures or human being. Whereas the use of positivist and empiricist epistemology as a positive underlabourer produces a methodology that conflates the real into the 'actual' (i.e. decontextualised empirical 'facts'), the use of an essentialist ontology makes methodology either redundant (as the ontology mirrors all the essential properties which determine human behaviour), or an exercise in arbitrary verificationism. Against this, realist anti-foundationalism can act as apositive underlabourer for the social sciences if it is complemented by a social realist ontology of emergent properties, to act as a metatheory which guides methodology. In developing this argument my chief concern is to show that realism (as developed by Archer and Bhaskar) is a more adequate position than post-Wittgensteinian positions which focus on 'practices' and how people 'go on' in 'forms of life'. 'Adequacy' in this sense pertains to epistemological discussions about the status of knowledge, together with ramifications of post-Wittgensteinianism for knowledge of the socio-political realm. This means providing a critique of Rorty and Giddens, after dealing with the issue of empiricism. Although Rorty's critique of 'postmodernism' as essentialist is accepted. Whereas realism can explain how we have a conceptually mediated and fallible knowledge of reality, including social reality, post-Wittgensteinian positions fall into truth-relativism and essentialist conceptions of human being and social structures.

The dissertation presents a descriptive analysis of aspects of British fictional writing prefaced by a comparative analysis of cultural theory concerned with questions of place and socio-spatial relations-The general aim is to show how both the theory and the fiction negotiate elements of a relational poetics and politics of place in the context of negatively homogenizing tendencies in socioeconomic developments during the last thirty years of the twentieth century. In the first part, the writers of cultural theory are divided into three preliminary areas, covering primarily Marxist, post-structuralist and environmentalist approaches to questions of place and its relations. The second and third parts then provide more detailed consideration of novels by Raymond Williams and lain Sinclair which have so far not been accorded substantial critical attention. The aim is to show how their approaches in the novels considered converge with aspects of the theory discussed in the opening part of the dissertation. In all cases, the writers are presented as producing 'partial mappings'. These are seen as offering perspectives of sufficient scope to provide effective criticism of, and possible alternatives to, negative and disorientating aspects of social relations affected by tendencies in capital accumulation which might be seen as endangering elements of social justice and equality, cultural heterogeneity, and ecological viability. The first part includes consideration of the poet Charles Olson and a related aim is to suggest how novels such as those by Williams and Sinclair might provide a significant complement to both theory and modem epic poetry in relation to questions of place.

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The critical reception of Kristeva's writings has largely been in the field of feminist thought, literary studies and social theory. Her thought has been appreciated or abandoned on the grounds of its argument that the concepts and practices of 'psychoanalysis' and 'literature' present the truth of modern social and political relations - in distinction from and criticism of philosophical 'system' . The thesis implicitly challenges this general reception of I<risteva's thought. It presents a systematic reading of Kristeva's writings and discloses the Hegelian ambition of her analysis of the 'subject' in social and political relations. The main object of the thesis is to establish the philosophical foundations of Kristeva's 'return to Freud' in the philosophy of law from Kant to Hegel. The thesis presents the significance and limitation of her engagement with German idealism, and the consequences of that limited engagement for the ambition of Kristeva's oeuvre. The meaning of the speculative philosophy of law is recovered from its premature reduction in the developments of, and departures from, her thought in contemporary critical engagements with French and German philosophy.

This study seeks to identify a coalition of philosophy and literature in the work of Franz Kafka, and begins with a grounding of his output in the philosophical context from which it emerged. This relatively under-researched philosophical backdrop consists in Kafka's study, at university and in a discussion group, of philosophical positions derived from the "descriptive psychology" of Franz Brentano. Kafka was hence conversant with several philosophical agendas, notably those of logic, Gestalt psychology, and a nascent form of phenomenology, which all derived their impetus from Brentano's work. The initial issue, therefore, is that of assessing the extent of a purported influence of such theories on Kafka's texts. What emerges as a "strategy" of Kafka's work is the aesthetic exploitation of such positions; a tactic which constitutes an almost parodistic subversion of these early forms of phenomenological thought. Thus on the one hand it is implied that the narrative technique of Kafka's work, and in particular the representation of consciousness and its "world", is derived from Brentanian thought, and on the other that this influence is modulated in a specific direction, which renders these texts so singularly amenable to post-structuralist thought. My project consequently proceeds to examine the post-structuralist response to Kafka while juxtaposing this analysis with the grounding of his work in proto-phenomenology. Central to this stage of the study are Blanchot, Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze and Guattari, and the scrutiny of their perspectives will be organized by the themes of authorship, interpretation, power, and desire. The exploration of the "deconstructive" standpoint, represented primarily through Blanchot and Derrida, will be guided by an account of why such a stance seems to be accommodated so readily by Kafka's work, and also of the extent to which his texts could be said, on the basis of the influence of Brentanian thought, to resist such appropriation.

The thesis critically appropriates the collaborative philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to argue that the general tendency of capitalism is towards the disintegration of high-level control structures (for instance, the nation-state). This disintegration does not entail a movement towards total chaos or anarchy. I argue that capital generates its own guidance mechanisms, but ones that act at a low-level, and respond flexibly to changing conditions (an instance of micro-politics). One of the difficulties of this project stems from the fact that the canon of philosophical discourse itself operates as a high-level control structure. In Marx, the development of capital is controlled by a secularized Hegelian dialectic that determines the outcome of capital in socialism. For Freud, the low level organization of the unconscious is subjected to high-level control through the universality of the Oedipus complex. By addressing the need for new philosophical instruments to understand capitalism, the thesis produces critiques of Marx and Freud, and advances a philosophy of economics by examining the function of axiomatics. Moreover, in critiquing presupposed structures (for example, the unconscious as a theatre of representation), the thesis argues for an immanent system (mulliplicity) of interaction within capitalism. The research undertaken to complete the thesis has consisted of contemporary experiments in complexity theory, and current socio/economic analyses of labour markets. Of particular interest has been the current deindustrialization that has taken place in the west coast of the United States. With the influx of a periphery into the core area of Los Angeles, the current role of urban politics and minor literatures (most notably Shakur's autobiography) unleash desire into the circuit of the city. I conclude with a re-examination of micro political/economic movements that have manifested themselves into the economy of Los Angeles. By decoding locally impoverished economic and cultural sectors, emergent properties have sprouted by realigning subversive activity onto the apex of capital (an immanence to capitalist processes).

This thesis takes up the challenge of Jacques Derrida's Glas from an Hegelian perspective and addresses the central question of Derrida's book: "quoi du reste [ ••• ] d'un Hegel?" - "what remain(s) of a Hegel?". Glas construes a Hegel whose system is 'reappropriative' of all alterity and Derrida's efforts are devoted to disclosing the elements of Hegel's system that are not only incapable of reappropriation but which are, for that reason, the system's condition of possibility. Each chapter of the thesis addresses the construction of these 'remain(s), with regard to Hegel's text. The essay considers Derrida's reconstruction of Hegel's conception of Sophocles' Antigone, of the absolute religion and the construal of the Jews, whilst it also addresses the 'general fetishism' that is the method of Glas and is paricularly evident in the portion of the text devoted to Genet. In response, the thesis examines the Hegel of deconstruction and counters this construal with a rereading of the Hegel texts from which the 'remain(s), are collected. The fundamental argument of the thesis is that Glas presupposes and confronts the Hegel-reading of Alexandre Kojeve: a 'reappropriative' Hegel whose system concludes with the selftransparency of the bourgeois subject as citizen of the modern state. The 'remain(s)' represent all that refuses to be subsumed by the law or 'concept' of this state. In parallel, the argument focuses upon Derrida's construal of Hegel's thought as the 'metaphysics of the proper' and the essay thereby conceives of 'differance' as the alienation that constitutes formal identity or 'propriety'. Thus, the inadmissable 'remain(s), supply the formally-universal state and citizen of Kojeve with the moment of 'difference' that it must suppress: the 'remain(s)' collude with the sphere of production and exchange, with civil society and the proprietor. In contrast to the Kojevean Hegel of Glas, the thesis shows that Hegel's thought is not the narrative justification of modern, positive, property law but the determination of the latter's fixed and abstract oppositions. The response to Glas considers the 'remain(s)' to be the moment of alienation that is constitutive of the modern, universal right of private appropriation. Derrida, incapable of thinking otherwise than according to abstract law renders that moment transcendental. Thus, the thesis depicts Hegel as confronting the one-sided conceptuality of Kojevean 'right' and the one-sided emphasis upon non-identity and intuition in Derridean differance. The thesis asserts that Hegel's 'absolute' and the notion of 'ethical life', far from being the justification of positive law, adumbrate the possibility of cognizing this law without imposing the abstract concept anew. In the name of precluding the domination of the concept, however, the 'remain(s), will simultaneously reassert positive law as 'unknowable' whilst maintaining the violence of the law's imposition and its undeterminable oppositions.